Seveneves

Part world-building, part Apollo-13, and part House of Cards. Skip the last third of the book though.

Seveneves

This book is part world-building, part Apollo-13, and part House of Cards. Hilariously, a thinly-disguised Neil deGrasse Tyson and a hybrid Musk/Bezos make major plot contributions to the novel. It's clear that Stephenson put a ton of research into the technology side of things too. And there's some great subtle humor in here too (like burying cryptographic one-time pads in the "sexual harassment policy" section of an enormous corporate policy manual). And they code in Python! What more could you want?!

Seveneves is great fun. Particularly the first 2/3. The last third (set 5,000 years in the future) is a lot squiffier, but the first 2/3 is just so good that I'm sticking with 5. Cryptonomicon is still better. I don't recommend reading this book if you have anything else you need to do this week.